Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Some years ago a client engaged a consultant to help with a small postal
mailing to the purchasing departments of blue chip corporations.

The
consultant sourced the list (which was provided on MSExcel) and drafted
the letter.

Thereafter the client was keen to take control of the
project, ie., to run the mail-merge and the fulfilment (basically
printing, envelope-stuffing and mailing).

The consultant discovered some weeks later that a junior member of the
client’s marketing department had sorted the list (changed the order of
the listed organisations in the spreadsheet), but had sorted the company
name column only, instead of all columns, with the result that every
letter (about 500) was addressed and sent to a blue chip corporation at
another entirely different corporation’s address.

Interestingly the mailing produced a particularly high response, which
when investigated seemed to stem from the fact that an unusually high
percentage of letters were opened and read, due apparently to the
irresistible temptation of reading another corporation’s mail.

Moral of the story : Even bad qualities of people can be a helpful thing for you.Think and act innovative :)